Buyer Be Aware
The Mini 1 is not a bad drone for what it does but the real issues are DJI's grossly inadequate user manual and that dealing with DJI’s customer service is excruciating and may expose your personal information to people outside of DJI. My experience comes from a fly away and my attempts to get DJI to stand behind the loss. First, DJI’s internal information system does not prevent your personal information from being assigned a case number already assigned to someone else. Once this error has been made, DJI starts to send you information about whoever got the number first while you case languishes. As a result, I got the name, physical address, email address and phone number of the other party. I do not know what identifying he got of mine but I do know my information had not been purged from his file for a least a week after I discovered the error and reported it to DJI. I know this because DJI called me a week later to inform me that I should have already received a replacement drone but, of course, it was not me who they were trying to reach. In addition, a DJI supervisor revealed this error occurs a couple of times every other month. When they attempted to compensate me for the data breach, they offered 10% off the cost of a new drone. Second, the Mini 1 manual has no information on what happens if you lose video contact or complete contact with the drone. Forums on the mini are replete with stories of “fly aways” or lost contact but nowhere does the manual you how you can tell the difference on the remote control and or, according to the DJI customer service, that the drone will automatically Return To Home after 11 seconds if it receives no further instruction from the remote control. When I asked if DJI would improve the manual, the response was that “the user manual or the instructions will not cover every detail”. Yet they produce a video for an earlier model drone which covered this issue. Third, DJI will not reveal the content of the drone’s data file captured by its app. According one forum DJI encrypts some of this data so 3rd party apps are of limited value. This means you have no way of confirming what DJI says happened. DJI also does not capture the loss of video from the drone, nor does DJI see the loss of video as a contributing factor related to a fly away or crash. Fourth, DJI is primarily based in China so while they have TA staff in the Philippines (and maybe elsewhere) the staff you deal with on a “fly away” in based in China and they operate on a schedule 12 hours ahead of EST. This means that emails usually take two of more days to make a round trip, slowing down the whole process of dealing with a claim. Finally, DJI’s Refresh program requires all pieces of the drown be returned for it to be in effect. So, for example if your drone crashes and your camera comes off then you must find it for DJI to replace your drone. In the end, DJI offered a total 25% off the cost of new drone for a model that has been discontinued and refused to sell me a refurbished one. DJI controls about 70% of the market and as a result it is hard to find good alternatives but it could well be worth the effort. PS - DJI representatives have asked for me to reveal my personal identifying information in order to "assist" me. All of the information I have presented is based on emails from DJI or contemporaneous notes of phone calls I have had with their representatives. So the information is available if the company was doing internal audits or reviews of their interactions with customers. Everyone I have asked has told to forget this request in order to avoid wasting more time on this experience. If these DJI representatives could assure me that they actually have the authority to change part of DJI's approach to how they deal with customer issues I might consider it. Short of that, at this point, I agree with those have advised me.